Any Other Verse
by disillusionist9
Summary: His not-quite corporeal form leaned against the opposite end of her workbench, his neck exposed to the setting sunlight, a streak of red-tinted light across his neck in a violent slash. Hermione was doing her best to ignore the way his breathing filled the space between bubbles in her potions or how the air in the room changed whenever he entered. AU. COMPLETE. SPOOPYSCARYDULCEWEEN
1. All Hallow's Eve

The little charm on her bracelet shone in the light from the high windows of the potions lab, her fingers holding tightly to the neck of the bottle she poured slowly into the cauldron. She faced away from the bright afternoon sunshine and cursed, not for the first time, the ineptitude of the designer of this lab. Ingredients and potions were affected strongly by extended exposure to sunlight. Her nimble fingers, already some of the fastest potions work in Britain, were forced into a frenzy each time they visited this estate.

Leaves pasted themselves to the roof of the conservatory, a mixture of autumn air, the proximity to a river, and multiple cauldrons, steamed the glass and collected condensation on the outside. If she had even a moment to spare to look up through the veins, she would enjoy the way the overlapping leaves made a patchwork of Gryffindor colors, bold reds and golds, and have some quick-witted comment to spare about organs on the roof and organs in the potions. Instead she focused all her attention to the steady measure of pouring and chopping, her body darting along the workbenches with practiced grace.

Tom, however, had all the time in the world to admire the aesthetic.

His not-quite corporeal form leaned against the opposite end of her workbench, his neck exposed to the setting sunlight, a streak of red-tinted light across his neck in a violent slash. Hermione was doing her best to ignore the way his breathing filled the space between bubbles in her potions or how the air in the room changed whenever he entered. The days leading up to Halloween meant this effect was heightened, as the lines around his form solidified.

"I've asked you to leave," she reiterated for what felt like the thousandth time, not changing her pace or moving her gaze to see his reaction. A curl escaped her high bun to start tickling the back of her neck.

"And I've chosen to ignore you," Tom replied smoothly. His Cheshire grin gleamed blood-red from the light running through him, adding a drawled, "Obviously," meant to incite a reaction from her.

Her eyebrows knit together more tightly.

A bang of the door of the lab opening preceded the voluminous form of Gregory Goyle, Sr, the buttons of his waistcoat straining against the full belly beneath. Hermione tried to ignore the involuntary call of her empty one.

"Done yet, witch?" he asked, his deep voice grating after hours of listening to the not-ghost regale her with recitations of old spell theory and prejudiced agendas with a voice as sinful of darkly roasted coffee. She caught herself wishing to hear more about why Tom hated Muggles and muggleborns, instead of her lungs filling with the cloying scent of too much cologne and the underlying stench of disdain that followed Goyle whenever he was in a room with her.

"I've almost run out of kidneys, so if you'd like me to be able to finish this batch before next Halloween you'll have to speak to Thoros."

Goyle made a sound that could have been a growl, if the man was more than only slightly intimidating. "You were told to call me sir, girly."

Wandless, Hermione made due by waving her hand to summon the next jar of ingredients she needed, fighting a wince as it passed through the man no longer observing the way the light played through the leaves. Her voice remained steady though Goyle toyed with his wand openly at his side. She hadn't cared what these Knights did to her in quite some time.

"As you say, Goyle," she said, plucking out a pair of rat lungs from the jar. "Doesn't change the fact you lot haven't done your job correctly for months, and as I'm not allowed to hunt for myself, I've left that macabre task to you lot."

By now the portly man still in full Wizengamot robes was searching her face with narrowed eyes and scowling. "If you weren't so blasted useful in this lab-"

"You'd have killed me months ago." Her bored tone rose above the sound of her hands chopping the lungs into equal slices. "Get out of my lab before I use your toes for ingredients instead."

Hearing the real threat in her voice, Goyle postured for a few more moments, and made sure to shatter an empty beaker on his way out with a meaty hand. Hermione sighed as the lung slices plopped into the jaundice yellow potion, the last step she needed to take for the day, and rolled her eyes as she mentally added to the laundry list of equipment and ingredients she still needed to finalize her work. The beaker only brought Goyle's contribution to her shopping list up by another two galleons.

The sweat beading everywhere on her body, rolling down her back like the condensation rolled down the windows of the lab, Hermione suppressed the urge to wipe it away from her forehead. Only ten more minutes of stirring and she could rush out of the room to the hottest shower she could find, and scrub away this nightmare that wouldn't end.

She shivered as a hand, neither cold nor warm, brushed against her neck before undoing her bun, nimble fingers just real enough to fix the knot atop her head, recapturing the tendrils that escaped. Tom stood silently at her back for the remaining time the potion required, staying inches away while she worked, but not touching her again.

By the time the sun had set and the fairy lights along the lawn cast a different glow into the lab, all of the potions and utensils were packed away. Hermione leaned against a stone wall to finally take a moment to look out onto the beautiful lawns outside, her fingers toying with the clear gems on the bracelet.

"Has Thoros announced further intentions?"

Hermione looked up at the first words spoken in the lab since Goyle left in a huff and broken glass. The cruel line of her mouth while watching the silver spin around her wrist curled upwards into a grin that mirrored Tom's from before.

"Jealous, Riddle?"

His responding scoff wasn't quite quick enough. "Of your marriage to Nott? I'd rather keep my filthy Muggle father's surname."

Hermione regarded the Dark Lord with a sharp gaze, the reason she'd been dragged into this parallel universe in the first place. His jawline stood starkly in the half-light, all the lanterns in the lab extinguished. No more than seventeen, the Horcrux of the other Tom Riddle mimicked her stance against the wall next to her. Their arms brushed slightly, the contact making them both shiver.

"Until you figure out how to get us back to our universe I'm afraid this is my best option, Tom."

"Are you convincing me, or yourself?"

"Both," she said, the logical coolness of her voice drawing his eyes to her.

Her hair was kinked and knotted in places where the elastic pressed on the curls in the steamy room, the definition of unruly. The lips that sent poisonous barbs in every direction were bright red in the darkness, pouted delicately beneath eyes that saw everything...and nothing all at once.

"What will you do upon our return?" Tom asked, keeping his gaze on the witch who acted indifferent to his scrutiny.

"Continue to destroy your Horcruxes, Tom," Hermione answered automatically. This was a dance she knew, a call and answer repeated on a schedule she knew better than the beat of her heart. "My entire existence there relies on your destruction."

"True," Tom said, "though hardly an incentive for me to continue sneaking up to the Nott library while you engage in sordid-"

"It's none of your business what I do with my time or my body-"

"Oh, but it could be."

Hermione stopped short in her tirade, her gaze whipping around to meet his, unwavering their entire conversation. This argument felt familiar at first but had morphed into territory neither had breached before. She couldn't stop the thick swallow that started at the crest of her throat, nearly choking her, the movement drawing Tom's attention to the way the thin skin rose and fell. His gaze remained there as he watched how her pulse increased.

From indignation, she assured herself; righteous anger at his implication...surely nothing else.

Fighting back the notion it could be anything more than that, the lioness lifted her hackles in an act of defense and spat, "You dare insinuate any attraction to me, Tom Marvolo Riddle? You? The man who has spent the last two years reminding me exactly why my kind are no more than dangerous changelings or freak mutations, requiring extermination? Don't insult me by saying I'm the exception, I get that enough of that from the version of you in this world."

Tom's eyes sparked dangerously in the dark and Hermione hated how she was trained to be drawn to that, how Thoros and the Voldemort of this time created a Pavlovian call in her breast to the darker pieces of human nature. This wasn't what her life was supposed to be: pinned against the wall like some moth on display by the hungry eyes of a mass murdering Dark Lord, while a pair of them waited for her in the master's suite upstairs.

She stood still as a hand she could almost see through, and that no other living soul in this universe could see at all, rose up to cup her face, pushing her chin until her racing heartrate drummed against taut skin.

"The verse where you are mine. Mine, alone. That's where I will take you, Hermione. Watching one version of me share you with another man, allowing you to marry into a family that doesn't deserve you...I would not allow it. You deserve the place of the Queen, the right hand of a new era, and not the place of courtesan." He watched her resolve crumble at his admission, thoughts he'd kept to himself for far too long. "They do you a disservice. I will take you where you will be properly worshipped."

"Don't touch me," she said, the fire of before dimming into nonexistence.

Tom's lips, so close to hers, twitched into a small smirk. "Are you convincing me, or yourself?"

Before she could reply, those teasing lips met her throat and moved up to her lips, silencing any possible responses. The darkness of All Hallows Eve granted the Horcrux-ghost an almost corporeal form which he used to his immediate advantage, pinning the woman he'd watched move through a strange world with the precision and grace of the sharpest blade, drinking from her lips like a man starved. For he was starved, and depraved, and nothing that she should want.

But he was everything she craved.

As they both came up for air, Tom forgetting that on these nights when the Veil was thinnest he was bound by the rules of the living, their foreheads pressed together in a sweaty tangle of hair and emotion. Hermione finally caught up to the question that still lingered in the air between them. Cupping Tom's chin as he had done to her minutes before, she licked her lips and murmured, "Both."

* * *

 _Requested by **curiouselfqueen** on tumblr: Tomione - "Wait a minute, are you jealous?"_


	2. Faded

_You were the shadow to my light_  
 _Did you feel us?_  
 _Another start, y_ _ou fade away_  
 _Afraid our aim is out of sight_  
 _Wanna see us_  
 _Alive_

* * *

"Where did you go, flower?"

A bloom of goose bumps covered Hermione's shoulders as Thoros whispered his question into her skin. She stared out the open window onto the grounds of the manor their contingent was currently occupying. There was only a thin sliver of the moon left to illuminate the garden paths below, but she could still make out the lines of the Dark Lord and a few others sitting in the gazebo near the lake. Without the power of that light from above, she knew her Tom, the one that brought her to this verse in the first place, would be almost nonexistent.

Her bare skin heated to match the temperature of the man leaning against her back, and she leaned into his chest, pulling the sheet up further over herself to cocoon the warmth of their bodies. "I wish he would let me join him on those meetings."

"Our Lord?" Thoros glanced out of the window. He chuckled as he resumed kissing any exposed skin he could reach: her shoulders, her neck, her palm when she brought her hand up behind her. "He would not risk you."

"Yet-" Hermione's protests were interrupted with a hitched breath as Thoros's hands started to wander as diligently as his lips. "Yet he insists on meeting with those... those _scoundrels_ alone."

"Do you trust him? Do you trust me?"

"Hardly."

Thoros chuckled, a sound that thrummed through his throat and over Hermione's shoulder blades before he sunk his teeth into one of them a bit harder than necessary. "Ah, cheeky witch. Smart witch. But your resolve fades as swiftly as the moonlight."

The weight of truth behind the offhand comment filled Hermione's stomach with a sea of stones, cascading like a tidal wave until they settled into every crevice of her sanity, filling those edges she'd allow to go soft. She turned in her husband's arms to pull her gaze away from the man who was nothing like the one she'd known in her world.

"Another month has passed," she said, partly to stem the flow of intrusive thoughts within her, and partly to stop his distracting and wandering hands. "You've earned the answer to another question."

Since Hermione tumbled into the garden behind a burning Nott Manor, an invisible to everyone but her specter of Tom Riddle alongside her, and swiftly risen in the ranks to stand beside the leader of a quiet resistance and his right hand man years ago, the couple played a game. The magic that brought her to the parallel universe was nebulous, and dangerous to say the least, which halted the ability for her to answer many questions. But she allowed Thoros one more question for every month she stayed. They didn't know when or if she would fade back to a world with a version of Tom Riddle that was devoted to an entirely different cause.

In this world Hermione was certain it was she who was more of a monster. Another piece of her past self faded away each day.

Thoros was silent as his face fell from a hazy mirth, clouded by arousal and sleep, to a focused stare at his fingertips tracing the moles and scars on Hermione's arms and back. Seamlessly those fingers traced from one soft plane to another, following the line of skin up her throat to cup her chin and turn her towards him in a languid kiss. His dark hair obscured the last hints of light from the balcony window, long locks sweeping over her cheeks and forehead as he turned his body to cover hers, careful to not lose contact beneath the sheets as he used his considerable strength to twist her smaller body. Naked and breathing heavily from the moment of exertion, Thoros rested on his elbows, forearms slipping beneath Hermione's torso to completely circle her.

Now, with their eyes meeting gaze for gaze, she caught the true intensity he radiated. She'd never had to remind him that he could ask another question before. Hermione was certain he and the Voldemort of this world planned several questions in advance to glean what they could from their partner about the world she'd come from, an effort to not dilute the fabric of time more than it already had been, and to respect her privacy, as she had theirs on so many matters.

"Thoros?" she asked when he remained silent. His eyes didn't stray from her face but they were unfocused now. She lifted a hand from his chest up to his face, running her thumb over the lips she'd just been kissing.

"It's enough to have you here," he said slowly. "Each time you answer our question, I feel we lose another part of you."

Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Hermione didn't know what to say. She was saved by the return of their third bedmate.

"You're awake," Voldemort said as he moved to disrobe in front of his dressing cabinet. The layers of cloth moved like shadows behind him, soaking all the light from the window outside. The man beneath moved almost as fluidly, the faint glow of his skin ethereal in contrast. Hermione remembered the taught snakeskin of what her Tom had become, and again was thankful this world had no record of Horcruxes. Her Voldemort was near perfect and immortal through other means; means no less violent but nowhere near as harmful to his own body. Elizabeth Bathory and Ivan the Terrible in her word had been onto something, after all.

A flash of the last set of drugged criminals flew through her mind, subdued by her potions talents. She tried to remember the heinous crimes those men and women committed before they were drained to extend her Lord's life further.

"Awake and waiting," Hermione confirmed as she held a hand out to the third piece of her heart. "Your meeting with the vampires was...?"

He didn't respond until he'd removed most of the rings from his hands, placing them in a locked case. The faint glow dissipated as the magic of the metal and gems were removed from his skin, the added protections she had crafted herself for those meetings he would not let her join. If any of their enemies or sometimes-friends knew the Dark Lord's right hand potioneer and advisor came through a hole in the universe then there would be an arms race to dissect why she'd fallen through.

"Satsifactory, my dear," he said quietly, moving to slide next to Thoros and Hermione, Thoros still laying atop of their wife. The chill lingering on his body soaked into the sheets.

Twisting so she could lay between them, Thoros again at her back, she ran her hands over Voldemort's face and tried to read as much as she could. "What did-"

"There will be time to review the meeting in the morning, Hermione," Voldemort said with a smile, stilling her hands with his own. "For now, sleep."

She bit her lip to stop the list of questions in her mind from falling out: _Will they allow you to hunt on their land? Did you meet with their leader or simply another contingency? Is their hierarchy what I suspected, matriarchal?_ and simply said, "Of course, love."

Her vision of the window was obstructed by the men surrounding her, their arms and legs an endless loop of protection around each other only shared in this small sanctuary. She couldn't see the faint wisp of Tom Riddle, Jr. sitting on the window ledge, facing out to the sky, and only visible when the clouds moved away from the moon.

* * *

 _song: Faded by Alan Walker requested on tumblr by faerose06. Prompted by Shayalonnie. Posted to tumblr 12.28.2016_


End file.
